this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.

If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.

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0. Only post socialist memes


That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)


1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here


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That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.


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That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).


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The only dangerous minority is the rich.


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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

It’s like when I hear people claim that I have to “respect their beliefs”. No I don’t. If you want to believe an ancient fairy tale over reason, logic, and science, that’s your business— and I certainly respect (and will fight to defend) your right to your beliefs, as they are also my rights to my non-belief.

But do I respect your beliefs? Only if they deserve respect. And it’s beliefs like these for which I hold my… discerning position regarding the beliefs of others.

“Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Also I find those are people who rarely respect others’s beliefs

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I've found that folks with beliefs that aren't respectable, like believing that minorities don't deserve rights, tend to need to be reminded to respect other people's beliefs. Many times those beliefs hurt no one, like belief in astrology.

So they just weaponize and twist the lessons they were given to silence others so they can continue harming others.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

They need to respect my belief that they're assholes. I made it my religion in some way. My holy tradition.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's also the social contract resolution to the tolerance paradox. Essentially, the tolerance paradox is that tolerating intolerance erodes tolerance. This means eventually if you allow intolerance to fester, they will seize control and you lose that tolerance.

The social contract resolution is that by being intolerant, you lose your right to be tolerated. This avoids that paradox, but superficially can look like intolerance.

I hope this didn't end up too much like word salad.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I was able understand it pre-coffee so it made enough sense so hopefully mine won’t be a word salad too

TLDR a long winded version of what you said about the social contract

But to add on, like you said tolerance is a contract that only protects the parties that follow its terms

Example: (pick a group of your choice) “Hey _____ person, I’ll respect you if you respect me” Yay everyone’s happy we’re all chilling together even tho I’m 100% certain we have different beliefs down to the core

But when that contract is broken apply that to the blank above, “Hey Nazi, I’ll respect you if you respect me”. They won’t hold up their end of the deal so why should I hold up mine

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, absolutely, that's a much more readable summation than what I wrote.

As an aside, I really like the social contract theory. It's a pretty clean philosophical summation of how the majority of people in tolerant democracies see the world and provides the foundation for it, even if they don't think about it in formal philosophical terms. That essentially we are implicitly bound by the rules established by previous generations, those that set the rules (both cultural and legal), until such time as we form a political or cultural movement to change those rules. Then, anyone who comes after us is bound by those rules we set until and unless they in turn change them.

EDIT: I guess I should add that in the context of this thread, "be tolerant" is a cultural rule that has developed over the recent past, and thus if you aren't tolerant there are social repercussions (and in countries with hate speech laws, even legal repercussions) as that is the current rule.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I respect people, not beliefs.

Also the "traditional family values" people never seem to realize that no one pressures them to do liberal stuff. They can still be traditional.
I have to assume they project their own authoritarianism onto us liberal people.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The lament of the white conservative

If I'm not allowed to force my favorite things on everybody, I'm being oppressed.

If I'm not allowed to force the Others to not do their favorite things, I'm being oppressed.

If people who look and think like me own and control everything and the Others criticize that, I'm being oppressed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What they want is control. With their religion they get to be right because they read the book the hardest. Except everyone else gives zero shits about their book so they piss their pants crying.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Most of them didn't even read the book.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Who can blame them though. It's a absolute slog. I should try to read some today. See what I glean.

Edit: whoa I was completely wrong

First paragraph this thing goes hard

And God said, “Let there be light,”a and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.”

He just making night and day.

Edit2:

Oh shit, is God a communist?

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness,

Edit3:

I sense some foreshadowing

17but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”

Edit4:

Oh shit, I seen some people BBQ ribs into pure art but never a whole ass woman.

21So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he slept, He took one of the man’s ribsf and closed up the area with flesh. 22And from the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man, He made a woman and brought her to him.

Edit5:

1Now the serpenta was more crafty than any beast of the field

Just like a fucking snake? Was the garden of eden like Charlotte's web?

Edit6:

4“You will not surely die,” the serpent told her. 5“For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

But like he's not wrong.

Edit7:

“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life.

Fuck you snake.

Edit8:

“I will sharply increase your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

AW SHIT! Ladies, that's on you.

Edit9:

Alright, that's enough for today. Shits fucking wild. I'm not saying it didn't happen like all that just we are missing a lot of context here. How about some character development? Was god chill and was all like, "hey man this is my first creation so like I'm still trying stuff out, so bare with me." Or we're Adam and Eve just like, "hey creation is great and all but we kinda don't get the point of rules or understand what it is we are doing here."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I blame the combined events of The Green Sahara period ending, and The Bronze Age Collapse. Both they and what seems to be the time period when The Torah was written, seem to have happened within a century or two of each other.

I have no way to prove it, but I suspect the ending of The Green Sahara period may have caused The Bronze Age Collapse, and both of those events convinced the ancient Israelites to abandon all of the other Cannannite gods, and worship only EL the god of war and death. Then they wrote their apocalyptic fictive, to cover up their true origins. Little hint, ancient Israelite pottery doesn't have any Egyptian iconography or designs, nor is any of it found in Ancient Egypt. It does resemble Cannannite pottery and includes some Cannannite iconography, and is found in Ancient Israel. Archaeological evidence also indicates that the battle for Judea also never happened. There may have been a Moses like figure, but as far as I can tell, the rest of The Torah and possibly a few more of the oldest books of The Old Testament were created completely out of thin air.

Once you get to the parts about The Great Censuses of Jerusalem, then we have some archaeological and anthropological evidence to support that some of those people definitely existed, but their actions described in The Bible were exaggerated at the very least.